


Eye For An Eye

by jonbsims



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gore, M/M, assistant swap, distortion!martin, martin was gertrude's, michael is jon's assistant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 10:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18163940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonbsims/pseuds/jonbsims
Summary: A series of snapshots into Jonathan Sims, the head Archivist at the Magnus Institute's various encounters with the entity known as 'Martin'.





	Eye For An Eye

The first day that Jon is instated as Head Archivist, he sees a door he knows wasn’t there before. He also knows he shouldn’t go inside, but he does anyway, and opens it up to see an unfamiliar hallway.

The decor is very different from the rest of the Institute, he notes, with the various paintings and mirrors and the red wallpaper lining it.

Not necessarily a bad change, but a change nonetheless.

He is starting to feel panicked by the time he finds someone else in the hallway - a tall, chubby man that’s sitting on a chair in an alcove, reading a book he can’t quite recognize.

“Um. Hello?”

The man looks up at him, smiling.

“Oh, hello! I was waiting for you! I was starting to wonder if you were going to show up, honestly.”

The man’s voice is kind, and soft, in a way that gives Jon the impression he’s a bit nervous about this interaction. Still, there’s a sort of sharpness to it, a wideness to his smile that makes it unnerving.

“You were waiting…for me? Do I know you?”

“Yes, I was waiting for you. I heard you got promoted! An Archivist, huh? How is that going for you? Is it good?”

“Well, I only just started, so it’s not very eventful so far. Though, it seems I have quite a bit of work cut out for me. Err… May I ask your name?”

The man laughs, and it rings in his ears.

“You and your people, so concerned with names, labels. Can’t go a minute without having something to call everything, can you? You may call me Martin, if that makes you happy, I suppose.”

Jon begins to feel more uneasy as ‘Martin’ speaks. His skin crawls as he remembers other doors.

“You’re...not human, are you,” he states.

“Not very. Is that alarming to you?” Martin looks very amused.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Hmm. Interesting question. No, I’m not going to kill you, I’m having far too much fun.”

Jon backs up, trying to gauge if he can run, but he bumps into something. He looks behind him to see a wall, where he had been walking only a minute ago. His breath catches in his throat.

“So,” he starts, “what, you’re going to trap me here forever?”

Martin laughs again.

“No, I’m just here to warn you.” He comes closer, and Jon can smell the blood. “The others may not be as kind as I am. Be careful of where you stick your nose, Archivist, if you’d like to keep your fingers.”

Martin’s face is nearly an inch from his face, and he can see the spirals.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, like he’s not sweating and on the verge of a panic attack.

“Good. Now go on and go back to your Archives before I change my mind.”

Jon looks back at where the man is looking now. Instead of a wall, the door he came through stands there as though it were there the entire time. As quickly as he can, he shifts enough to open it, cram himself through it, and slam the door behind him.

By the time he calms down enough to look behind him, the door is gone.

He steels himself to talk to Elias about the event, who looks rather nonchalant about the whole ordeal.

“Hmm. Unusual, but not necessarily alarming. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

Jon isn’t sure how comforting that is.

“Still,” Elias continues, “be careful to look out for any new doors. Wouldn’t want you to get...lost.”

\----

The next time Jon sees Martin, it’s in his apartment.

When he sees the new door next to his kitchen when he gets home, he feels like his heart is about to stop beating. He briefly considers leaving immediately and calling Elias, staying at the Archives until this entity gets bored and leaves him alone. Then again, he would probably be fine if he didn’t go in the door...right?

So he walks into his bedroom to see Martin, on his bed, eating his biscuits.

“Hello there, Archivist! Nice to see you again.”

“What are you doing in my apartment?”

Martin huffs, seemingly offended by the question.

“What, I can’t visit an old friend?”

“I am not your friend, and we’ve only met once before, for five minutes at most.”

There is a beat of awkward silence.

“Well,” Martin says, “I am glad to know where we stand. Still, I guess I’m not here for, err, small talk, so I might as well get on with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Another warning. I don’t think you’ve followed my advice very well. You’ve gotten the attention of some particularly nasty people. I hope you’ve checked in on Michael, recently?”

Jon frowns.

“He’s sick. I’m not going to bother him.”

“Are you sure about that? You may want to call him. It would be...a shame, if something terrible were to befall him, and you never knew.”

He pulls out his phone and goes to Michael’s contact. He looks at the message briefly before hitting call. He sits there, the anxiety growing in his belly at every ring, Martin sitting there still happily munching on the biscuits.

Jon tightens his grip on his cellphone as it goes to voicemail.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “He probably isn’t around his phone all the time. That’s normal. It doesn’t mean he’s… It doesn’t mean anything.”

“If you say so. Go ahead and stay with me, then. The chocolate ones are quite nice.”

Jon shoves his phone back into his pocket and rushes back out of his apartment, barely hearing Martin’s last comment before he runs out.

“Oh, do grab a fire extinguisher or two on your way! I suspect you’ll need them. Good luck!”

\----

When he returns from his encounter with Jane Prentiss, Martin’s door is gone. There are no biscuits left in his cabinets. There is, however, a fresh pot of tea and a small card that says “hope you had fun with the worms! -love, martin :)”

Martin starts showing up more often after that.

\----

Jon is not surprised when Martin’s door appears again one night, and even less surprised when said creature comes bumbling out, happily bubbling out ‘hello’s and ‘how are you’s.

He is, however, not expecting the man to be covered in blood, holding a messy stack of papers, a brownish red staining the edges.

“What’s this?” he asks as deadpan as possible as Martin smears blood on his walls.

“A statement! You Archivists seem to be very fond of these things. You won’t get this one anywhere else! An exclusive! Aren’t you pleased?”

Jon sighs.

“Do I want to ask what happened to the poor statement giver once you got the statement from them?”

“Oh hush, they were going to die anyway. It felt like a waste to let them go to the Flame, anyway. Are you going to read it or not?”

Jon shakes his head and grabs the nearest tape recorder.

\----

Martin stares at him so intently, he can’t help but feel that he’s being an examined like an animal. Still, he does his best to stay still, to not fidget, even when the creature reaches out his hand, that hand which can do so much harm so easily. The scar on his shoulder burns.

Unsurprisingly, when the hand reaches Jon, it effortlessly cuts through his shirt and skin. He gasps at the pain, but still, stays still. Martin pulls his hand away immediately, looking conflicted and confused, even as the blood drips from his fingers.

There is a moment of pure silence before the space is filled with the sounds of cracking bones.

Jon looks down to see Martin’s hands shifting, breaking, writhing in a way that should not be physically possible. He flinches at the noises, and wonders how much it hurts.

“Concern isn’t very becoming of an Archivist,” Martin says.

Still, when Jon looks at the hands of the creature now, they look almost...human. In proportion with the rest of his body, in any case. Stocky, big, with short fat fingers that aren’t sharp as knives. The one that’s still covered in blood reaches out, touches the fresh wound, presses into it before relenting, lightly treading bloodied fingers until it reaches the Archivist’s jaw.

“You’re an interesting one. Not much of a presence of self preservation, hmm?”

Jon shakes off the laughter buzzing in his mind. “Seems so.”

He leans into the hand that caresses his cheek. There’s blood getting all over, and it’s staining his shirt, but he can’t really find it in himself to care. He closes his eyes, content.

“You’re very confident that I won’t kill you, aren’t you?”

“I think that if you were planning on that, you would have already done so.” He opens his eyes again. “Wouldn’t you?”

Martin looks shocked for a second, and then laughs, a loud and dizzying laugh that hurts like a migraine.

“You’re funny. I like you, Archivist - no. Jon.”

Jon wonders when they got on a first name basis. He doesn’t wonder about it too hard. He lets the creature pet him for a few minutes, before Martin finally leaves, the same way he came. This time, the door doesn’t disappear behind him.

Perhaps it’s an invitation.

\----

When Martin walks up behind behind Jon, patting his hair and saying “Perfect”, shortly before continuing to run his sharp fingers through it, he assumes that it is just a bit of affection, as normal, and continues on with his day.

Until he goes back to the Archives and Michael is continuously giving him weird looks.

“What is it, Michael? Is there something on my face?”

The assistant jumps, yelping just a little bit.

“Err, have you been, um… Going in a lot of, abandoned houses, or something?”

Jon furrows his brow.

“No, why?”

“I think there’s - I think there’s a spider web in your hair? Maybe?”

He screams.

It takes him about twenty minutes, with Michael’s help, to thoroughly search his hair to his own satisfaction that there are, in fact, no spiders anywhere on him, only the singular web.

“This web… It kinda looks like those weird, uh, fractals that you see online,” Michael comments.

Jon can hear Martin’s distant laughter. He groans.

\----

Looking at Martin for too long hurts his head, so he doesn’t. Instead he settles for holding hands, touching his face, petting his hair. The sensations change regularly, sometimes being sharp, soft, cold, hot, and it becomes difficult to tell which ones are real.

Which is troubling, because he really does want to know more about the creature, this man that has apparently taken a liking to him - enough to visit him in his apartment on a regular basis.

He wonders if his powers would allow him to know anything more.

It only takes seconds for the information to flood his brain, so much that it’s overwhelming. He feels like his head is going to split in half.

“Martin Blackwood,” he gasps.

Martin stops what he was doing to look at him, shocked.

“You were born - July 25th. Your father left, and your mother, she - she - before Gertrude threw you to the Spiral, you liked - you were in love with -”

Before he can say anymore, Martin’s hand is covering his mouth, shoving him into a wall.

“Who gave you permission to know me, Archivist?” 

Martin’s smile does not betray the bloodlust in his eyes. Jon claws at the limb covering his face, but it does not budge an inch.

“You must not know, how painful it is, as a creature of deceit, to be known. Though, you could if you so desired. That information is not meant for your eyes, and you will be punished as such. Naughty Archivists don’t get to see.”

Jon whimpers as Martin reaches with his free hand towards his left eye, but is helpless even as the fingers start to dig into the socket.

The pain is blinding.

He knows that he is screaming, but he does not know how to stop, and the pain keeps coming. The blood mixes with the tears that run freely down his face. For a moment, his vision goes white.

When he comes back to consciousness, his face is wet and Martin stands in front of him, a red lump of meat in his hand - presumably whatever is left of his eye. Jon’s hand twitches violently.

“You may want to go to the hospital for that, before you bleed out that is,” Martin says, though it barely registers.

Jon manages to call an ambulance before passing out.

\----

“Jon, you shouldn’t be letting that...thing into your home.”

Jon sighs, absently rubbing at his remaining eye, though he can’t bring himself to come up with an argument.

“You could have died,” Michael continues.

“I didn’t.”

“That’s besides the - you lost your eye. You nearly lost all your blood.”

“I don’t think it was his intention to kill me, either way. I think if it meant to, I would not be here right now.”

For a moment, the only noise in the room is the soft beeping of the heart monitor. He tries to ignore the sticky feeling of the bandages covering half his face - one time reopening the wound was quite enough.

“What you,” Michael says, quietly. Jon looks at him. “What you said about - who Martin was. What Gertrude did to him, he… That could have been me, couldn’t it?’

“Michael…”

“If I had - if I had transferred earlier, if I… That could have been… I need to go.”

“Wait,” Jon says, grabbing Michael’s wrist.

His assistant looks at him sadly, sympathetic. Considering for a moment to stay, while Jon looks so vulnerable, so frightened and childish.

“Sorry, Jon,” Michael finally says before pulling away, leaving the room.

Left alone, Jon blinks, gently touching the patch of cotton covering his eye. The bandages should probably be changed soon.

\----

When Jon goes home, with a bag of assorted eyepatches in hand, he does not expect to see Martin’s door, but it is there anyway.

At first, he tries to ignore it - making dinner, drinking tea, looking on his laptop for work updates. Still, he can’t help but feel as though the door is judging him, staring at him from across the room. He wonders if he should cover it, perhaps with a tarp or some such.

By the time the sun is setting, he can no longer pretend it doesn’t exist.

Such as the other times he had summoned Martin, he walks up to the door, takes a deep breath, and knocks.

Nothing happens.

He is about to give up after a minute of silence, staring at the white door - obviously, Martin just hasn’t remembered to remove this door yet - it creaks open, slow and making an awful noise. It is obvious there is something wrong, something different, and Martin does not appear to be there.

Taking a moment to ready himself, he opens the door the rest of the way and steps inside.

The lights flicker, casting a harsh and ominous light on the corridor, which seems to in much more of a disarray than when he last saw it. When he steps further in to examine the various dark stains that nearly blend in with the carpet and wallpaper.

The smell of copper is nearly overwhelming.

He tries to ignore his oncoming panic, the sense of dread he feels as he wanders the endless halls, the figure in both the paintings and mirrors getting closer and closer every moment. At some point he doesn’t know, he starts sprinting, turning corners at random and doing his best not to stumble.

But, of course, it is inevitable that he runs into a dead end.

This entire section’s lighting seems to not be working, so when Jon turns around, he can see Martin’s form illuminated by the flickering lights behind them, but not his face. Not his expression. As he backs up against the wall, he can feel the familiar frayed sensation of being trapped.

“Archiviiiist,” Martin sings, before laughing. The laughter fills the hallway, before filling Jon’s head - it is so loud, he can’t think about anything else, he can’t do anything else but pray for it to stop.

The man comes closer, and closer, and closer yet, holding out a sharp hand, laughing still.

Jon closes his eyes, deciding to accept his inevitable death.

There’s a moment where it’s only that - the darkness, the laughter that fills him up and tears him apart from the inside out, the feeling of a warm breath on his cheek. The almost warmth of the hand preparing to slit his throat and bleed him out like a pig.

And then all at once, it stops.

He takes a moment before he opens his eyes, slowly. He doesn’t know what to expect - the creature being gone, Elias coming to his rescue, another entity interrupting this ordeal, perhaps - but not Martin, standing there, still grinning, tears flowing down his face.

“Why is it, Archivist? Why is it that no matter how hard I try, I just...can’t kill you? Why?”

Jon stares at him for a moment before stepping closer, reaching out a hand and petting the man’s cheek, as gently as he can.

“Perhaps it’s because you still remember your, err, crush on me. Before all this.”

Martin sighs at the contact.

“I believe you have what one would call a ‘death wish’, Archivist, being so familiar with me.”

“Most likely. Still, I can’t help but notice you never officially resigned from your job at the Archives. Would you care to come back and work for me?”

Martin laughs weakly.

“That’s a bad idea.”

“Yes. Are you going to come work for me or not?”

“Sure. Who knows, it might be interesting.”

\----

Jon goes to inform Elias of the newest development, but it appears that he’s already informed himself. Typical.

“An alliance with the Spiral, hm? Unexpected, but it could work in our favor. Be careful, though - I can’t help you if it decides it needs to take another eye.”

Jon glares at him.

“Well,” Elias continues, “unless there’s something else you need, I believe someone is waiting for you in the Archives.”

\----

“Jon!”

He raises an eyebrow at the happy chirp. Martin hops off the table he was perched on, happily bouncing over to the Archivist.

“I’m impressed, the Archives were a lot less organized the last time I was here. Anyway, there’s something I wanted to give you!”

“A present? That’s nice of you, Martin, but - oh jesus.”

Jon feels somewhat like he’s about to throw up as Martin reaches up to his own eye, wrenching it free from its socket. Still, he can’t help but continue watching with a morbid curiosity - there is no blood, though there is some sort of liquid dripping down his face. It doesn’t appear to hurt, either, as Martin cheerfully presents it to him.

The phrase ‘eye for an eye’ comes to mind. He briefly considers his options. Is he supposed to take it? Just stuff it into his own empty socket? Stick it in his pocket for later use?

“What are you waiting for? Take off your eyepatch!”

Without thinking about it, Jon complies, pushing the patch from his eye to his forehead, and then Martin is delicately holding his face still with one hand, holding the disembodied eye in the other. Before he can voice his concerns, the soft orb is being squished into the hollow cavern.

It is a strange sensation, and though not necessarily painful, it itches in a way that he has to restrain himself from scratching at it.

He blinks, with two eyes.

“Well? How is it? May not be an Archivist eye, but…”

“It may take some adjusting to,” he says, and then pauses for a moment. “Thank you, Martin.”

“My pleasure!”

Everything has a sort of weird tint to it, and there is a strange sort of glow that comes from Martin, the books and the statements that gives off the impression that the whole world is vibrating.

“I see you’ve already regrown your eye.”

Martin just laughs.

The world is filled with spirals.

**Author's Note:**

> just a short little thing for an au i like. i love getting reviews, and you can go talk to me on tumblr @patheticnyas! thanks again to my beta, seraph <3


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